Ikea strikes again

The newest addition to my wall.

Ring, ring. That's the sound of New York City slowly waking out of its winter slumber. I can tell because all of a sudden my friends want to hang out -- and I want to hang out with them. The warmer weather puts everyone in good spirits.

Then again, laziness occasionally prevails. On Sunday afternoon I was chilling out, watching some NASCAR and slowly recovering from two late nights. I had ignored my phone most of the morning, not on purpose but because I was asleep. By the time I checked my phone I had three messages -- which never happens. Of the three, the last message was the most interesting. It was S calling with an invitation to the Brooklyn Flea Market.

I returned his call and he chastised me for being too late. I was pretty bummed because I do want to hit the Flea but it will have to be another weekend. He was on his way back and offered to drop by and say hello.

And that's where I got him! (Insert evil laugh here.) After offering him some water, I looked longingly at my poor Ikea Premiär poster propped up in the corner. It was supposed to be on my wall by now. What is that, S asked. I explained the situation to him. He shuddered when I said Ikea. I'm still recovering from last time I helped you with Ikea, he said.

But he's a nice guy so he agreed to help me out. The first part was pretty easy -- we assembled an aluminum frame. Then we had to stretch the canvas by wrapping it around the frame and pressing plastic dowels into place to hold...not as easy. Again, Ikea had only one picture to show how easy the step should be but in practice not so much. There was a piece included to push the plastic pieces in, but it hurt our hands after awhile.

"Get me...an ovenmitt!" S demanded. I did, and what a brilliant idea it was. The process was much smoother after that. With the canvas stretched, S observed that it kind of smelled. And it did. Like freshly printed canvas. It was making us a bit high off the fumes.

After some air we were ready to hang the canvas. We attached the hangers to my wall, but they weren't really in there tightly. No studs. So the first couple of times we tried to hang the canvas, we failed. But on the third try we got it. I backed away from the wall with a smile.

It looks pretty good, S said. I had to agree. The canvas is ridiculously huge and it really takes advantage of the high ceilings. I wonder if it's a little too much NYC inside my apartment but I'm hoping to get away with it.

Plus, I'm not gonna lie, every time I look at the Flatiron Building I think 'Daily Bugle.' My canvas might soon have a little Spider-Man addendum to it.

The Accent Wall

The accent wall, pre-paint.

You can't say I'm anything if not determined. Stubborn, some would call it. As soon as non-Super gave me permission to paint, I hijacked my lunch break and headed down the Benjamin Moore store on Spring Street and picked up a sample of stem green.

After work I raced home and tried a sample spot. Though the green came out a little bit darker on my wall than in the chip sample, I still loved it. Stem green it is! With spring coming I need a little bit of the outdoors in. The next day I was back at the Benjamin Moore store for a gallon in semi-gloss. A gallon was way more than I thought I needed. Better to be safe than sorry.

Next, I called in a solid you owe me. P had painted several rooms in my Norwalk house and seemed to know what he was doing. Good enough for me! Plus I love hanging out with him. It's a true East Coast relationship -- we spend half the time loving and half the time arguing with each other.

I met P at Grand Central on Saturday and then we 6'ed it back up to my apartment. He had sent me prep instructions earlier in the week. I'd gotten a dropcloth and painting tape, along with 2-extending arm rollers. He came prepared as well. More tape, a special non-tip tray, and rags. After the obligatory teasing about the size of my apartment, we started taping. We agreed that he would do all the cutting (using a paintbrush on the edges of the wall) and I would do the rolling.

P tapes. It was tight quarters.

We had to do some furniture shifting. In a 300-sq. foot apartment there's not a lot room to maneuver but we managed to make enough space to paint. Getting the ladder in was another story.

My ceilings are probably about 12' high, so it wasn't like a stepladder would do. Luckily, my building super keeps a stepladder on my backyard. P got it in the door OK but then looked at the space between the wall and my bed and realized there was no way he could open the ladder up. Instead, he risked injury by leaning the ladder against the wall and carefully scaling it. Ever the doting assistant, I held up the paint tray so he wouldn't have to mess with his balance while cutting. Somehow, it worked.

We decided we didn't need to prime because the walls were painted eggshell right before I moved in. P worked on cutting around the radiator while I rolled. By the end of the first coat I had a nickname -- reckless roller. It may have been well deserved. Since I was just doing an accent wall I had to be careful near the other walls. I'd also picked the one wall with a window and the kitchen entry. A couple of times my roller may have accidentally gotten into the white trim. It got to be pretty funny. I'd say oops and P would look at me accusingly before grabbing the Windex and rag to clean up. He told me I was being rambunctious. I was just having fun.

All told, the taping and the first coat took about an hour. I was pleasantly surprised that the smell wasn't too bad. I guess I'm used to latex paint, which stinks to high heaven. We headed out to lunch despite the pouring rain. I'm sure we must have been quite the sight -- we'd attacked each other with brushes a few times.

We waited another hour before doing the second coat. The first coat had dried like the sample box -- a bit darker than the color chip. P told me not to worry and he was right. The second coat was much brighter. The paint coverage was excellent. Two coats was all we needed.

I headed back to Norwalk with P so the wall could dry in peace. When I returned on Sunday I was thrilled with the outcome.

The accent wall, post-paint.

The image in the Pottery Barn catalog made the color look lighter, but it's got a very pleasant tone to it. I keep my apartment lights slightly dimmed which makes the color look like fresh spring grass. But with direct light on it it takes on a much lighter look. It's multi-tonal.

I was excited that the color reflects
off my bathroom mirror.

My main concern was that painting one wall would make my apartment look smaller. I'm happy to say I really don't notice a difference. Also, the green makes me happy. I couldn't be more pleased with the end result.

The final result.

I've nicknamed this end of my apartment Pottery Barn corner. The art piece, my bedding and now the wall color are from there. It's a nice focal point when guests arrive and it makes me feel like an adult. It's another part of settling in.

Painting by Pottery Barn

Continuing my decoration mission I've decided my next task is painting. My wall color is an ivory or antique white and it's pretty nice but pretty bland. It succeeds in making my tiny apartment look larger than it is but fails in inspiring me to do anything but sit on my lazy ass. It's time to make an accent wall.

It was easy to decide which wall to paint but it's a tall order picking a paint color. I need a color that will coordinate with everything but I'm sooooo sick of taupe, coffee, espresso, beige...brown. I'm over it. Fine for furniture, bland on walls. I want a color that will really pop. I had my heart set on red. I thought it would be great! Red really pops. It would wake me up and the morning (and potentially keep me up at night) and it would give me energy. But then I found out how hard it is to paint red. I read horror stories about people being told to use pink primer and ending up with pink-tinted walls instead of red; or people who needed to use 4-5 coats; or people who had to paint over the red and needed 2-3 cans of primer. Yikes. And my landlord wasn't too keen on the idea of red.

Back to square one, my mail yielded a nice surprise -- the Pottery Barn catalog. Am I turning into a 20-yuppie or what? I flipped through, ignoring all the ridiculously expensive furniture and concentrating instead on the wall colors in the catalog. I noticed that some pages had the paint color named below the products. What a brilliant marketing idea -- most furniture catalogs show fully decorated rooms anyway, so why not team up with a paint manufacturer? All the paints were by Benjamin Moore. A note in the catalog pointed me to the Style House page on the Pottery Barn website. There they had a page-by-page breakdown of which paint color was used on each page of the catalog. Very cool idea.

After thinking about what would pop against my dark furniture but still go with it and still be a light enough color so as not to make my apartment feel smaller I settled on Stem Green. It has tones of lime without being quite as electric. The site also mentioned a free color chip deck at PB stores so I wanted to pick one up.

Stem Green, as shown on the
Pottery Barn website.

As luck would have it my friend J also wanted to hit PB for a pillow. I really had no idea if there was one in the city. With my recent luck, probably not.

- Is there a PB in the city? I asked her.
- Of course, she said, there's one at 59th & Lex.
- Noooo, you're thinking of Container Store.
- No, that's at 58th & Lex.
- Ok, but where around 59th & Lex is the Pottery Barn? There's the Zara, the Nanaban (Banana Republic), the H&M, and Bloomingdales.
- It's actually a little bit off the corner. Towards Park. We walk by it all the time when we shop. You've never noticed it??!?
- Umm...no. I have never noticed it.
- You really do have City Tunnel Vision.

I was dubious. How could I have missed a Pottery Barn by the corner I practically live at? A little while later, I sheepishly met her outside the PB, which was in fact real and was in fact just off the corner of 59th & Lex. J forgave me for doubting her and we walked in.

And then it happened. Once inside, straight ahead of us, was a bedding set like what I've been looking for. I gasped and J asked if I was alright. Worse, I said, I just fell in love with a bedding set. A salesperson told me it was the Songbird bedding. I've wanted a quilt for awhile and this more than fit the bill. It so soft to the touch, it was so exquisitely detailed, and it was so not cheap. And it was a golden yellow, which could potentially be too much with a light green wall right behind it.

I tore myself away so J could get her pillow. Up at the cash register I grabbed one of the free paint fan decks. But while J was paying I kept turning back to stare at the bedding. Curious for more info, I checked out the bedding online once I got back home. Turns out it comes in green too. Ah, green. The future color of my wall, the future color of my bedding, and the color of the money I'm trying not to spend.

The right to (furniture) assembly

What a weekend! I thought the Daytona 500 was going to be the main event but I was way off. On Saturday both my new dresser and my new TV came. It was like my birthday all over again.

After eyeing it for awhile, I had decided to invest in Crate & Barrel's Cole Six Drawer Dresser. I liked it because it has a nice mix of modern and traditional. From the website product photo I thought the dresser was black but upon looking at the room views I realized it was actually a dark brown. No matter...my Billy shelves from Ikea are black-brown...aka brown. The dresser is ready to assemble, which is another way of saying requires customer assembly. Despite my recent adventures in door hinges I was looking forward to putting it together.

My delivery time was between 7:30 AM and 10:45 AM. The delivery guys showed up around 8:30 with two hefty boxes. I signed for the boxes and jumped up and down for mini-joy. Hooray new furniture!

The boxes holding the dresser.

Note the big orange sticker on both boxes -- it says "Customer Assembly Required." Like by this point we wouldn't know! I opened the small box first. It contained the drawer fronts, the drawer backs and the drawer bottoms. The big box had everything else, including the instructions. I was quite impressed by the instructions. They had a manifest of each box and were very well written. It was quite easy to follow.

The first step required attaching the side and middle panels to the back (the sides were even helpfully labeled R and L). I was very happy that the drawer rollers were already attached to the panels. There were three same-size large panels in the big box and of course the back was on the bottom. Though the instructions recommended two-person assembly, I was on my own this weekend in part because I'm fighting a cold and don't want to get anyone sick.

About 30 minutes in, my phone rang. It was Crate & Barrel checking to see if my delivery went OK. I thought that was very nice of them. At that point I was ready to attach the top. The directions said "with another person helping lift the back and side panel assembly onto the top" to which I said 'I don't need no stinking second person!!" Somehow I was able to get the top into place without killing myself.

From there assembly was a piece of cake. Putting the drawers together required a bit of finesse but nothing I couldn't handle. It took about 2 1/2 hours altogether to assemble it. The drawers all slid into the dresser evenly (my main worry). The feet attach by three medium screws which is a bit weaker than I'd like but everything else was good quality.

The Cole dresser in the center
and the Billy shelves with the Nyckelby doors
on either side.

As I was hoping, the dresser looks great pulling double-duty as my TV stand. I'm kind of glad the Billy shelves didn't come in black now because the black-brown works well with the dresser. I still have work to do before this area of my apartment is done but we're getting there. My apartment is starting to feel like home.

Me vs. Ikea's Nickelbly doors

There are a couple of stores that I can't believe don't have locations in Manhattan proper. How is there no Target here? Ikea, where are you? Both have locations in Brooklyn (Ikea's is still under construction) but to get to either without a car is at least an hour trip. I can get to New Jersey faster than I can get to Brooklyn. Just sayin'.

So when it was time for an Ikea trip, I rented a Zipcar and was off to Paramus. This time I was looking for bookshelves - preferably something tall and thin to take advantage of my vertical lifestyle. Like Stew Leonard's, Ikea is set up not in aisles but in a maze pattern to encourage you to view everything (and to buy more). I don't mind though because their room setups always amaze me.

I made my way to the shelving area. I had come in expecting to buy the Besta shelving unit, but upon seeing it in person I didn't really like it. So instead I chose Billy shelves. One of the Billy displays had a Nickelby door on it, and I was immediately in love.

A little while later I was down in the self-serve furniture area getting my shelves and the doors. I loaded two shelves onto my pallet and headed over to the doors. They had two in stock, but one was broken. This meant another Ikea trip was in my very near future. The plastic protection was starting to peel off the other door but I took it anyway...and would come to regret that decision.

I got home and put the first shelf together -- pretty easy. I get a laugh out of Ikea's picture-only directions. Then I went to attach the door and realized it was missing hinges...groan.

A few days later I hit the Ikea in Elizabeth (where the staff is nicer but you get lost and maybe end up in Newark airport by accident on the way) and bought a second door, complete with hinges and instructions. I also went to customer service to get a set of hinges for my first door. They were nice enough to give me a set for free but when I got home I realized they weren't the right hinges. Ha!

Defeated, I finally called Ikea's customer service line where they opened a case for me and said they would try to get a set mailed to me. Awesome.

In the meantime, I could put one of the doors on. I followed the instructions -- attach the one hinge side to the door x 3. Check. Attach the other hinge side to the shelf x 3. Check. With the help of another adult, slide the door side into the shelf side until it clicks x 3. Friend S came over to help in exchange for some Haru's. He held the door while I tried to attach the hinge. No dice. The front slid in fine but the back part never clicked. I tried all 3 hinges but none went in. S asked to try so I held the door up while he gave it a go. Same problem. And I have to say, it really hurt my hands after a while.

We took a sushi break and upon return S wanted to try a new tactic. So we put the shelf on the ground and lined the door up on the floor. Finally, one of the hinges clicked. Eventually we got all three to click. But the high comedy was not over. We got the shelf into position and tried opening the door to make sure it worked. The door worked fine but every time we opened it the unit would start to tip forward! The door was proportionally heavier than the shelf (!!!) so opening it meant major tippage. Ikea provided a wall bridge for the top of the shelving but I plan to move these around so I didn't want to make tons of holes in the wall. Instead, my temporary solution is to have a block of wood under the radius of each door to keep it propped up. Snicker.

The end result.

Flash forward a couple of weeks -- I got a manilla padded envelope from Elizabeth, New Jersey the other day. Inside was my other set of hinges! I was pretty excited. I called friend S, who reluctantly agreed to come back and help me with the second door. Not wanting to spend hours with the hinges again, we tried our successful tactic - laying the shelf on its side with the door next to it. After an hour, our hands sore again, the damn things still hadn't clicked. We played around with the screw adjustments but it didn't work. It was incredibly annoying because we could see the catch slide into the proper position but every time we let go it would pop right back out. The instruction booklet makes it look so easy (one picture! slide and click!) but in real life clicking the hinges was harder than putting the shelf together.

Frustrated, I turned to the Internet. I went to the Ikea Fans forum and searched for helped. I found solace in the fact that other people were having the same issue but no one seemed to have a definitive answer. I tried searching for other types of door hinges on the forum and found an answer: use a damn hammer. I love it! Good old fashioned ingenuity. (Disclaimer: the forum actually said to use a mallet but I don't own one. And other respondents had used a hammer so I felt OK to try it. Obviously, hammers and glass don't mix very well so if you try this use caution.)

With the shelf and door still on the ground, we slid the first hinge into place. With S carefully pushing the button I tapped the hinge with a hammer a few times. S let go and we tested it -- finally the hinge had locked into place! After some finesse (more hammering) we got the other two to lock into place. The second unit shelving unit had the same tipping action as the first one, so another block of wood sits under the door's opening radius. I might have to perma-place these things.

Ikea adds storage in my kitchen

After about six months into living in the city I am finally starting to settle into my apartment. Aided by a nice bonus at work, I have started trading in my suburban (short and wide) furniture for city pieces (tall or deep).

My kitchen has been perplexing though. I have a good amount of cabinet space but it doesn't seem to be enough. One cabinet holds my pots and cooking stuff. The main cabinet over my sink holds my dishes and glasses, while the cleaning supplies and utensils live under my sink. My last cabinet holds my dry goods and my pans. I have almost no counter space, so my toaster and a paper towel holder are the only things around my sink.

It is a galley kitchen and everything is stacked on one side. So you'd think my free wall would be the perfect place to add more cabinets. Alas, the door way is not placed mid-galley, it is much closer to the right free wall. In fact, there's only 7" between the door and the wall. But lately I've really needed the additional storage. Inspired by Apartment Therapy's January Jumpstart Project, I decided to get off my arse and do something to fix my storage issues.

The "free wall." There is only 7 inches
of clearance from the wall to my door
to the backyard, or into the kitchen.

It was impossible to find cabinets that shallow, so my next option was shelves. I found 11" deep shelves but those stuck out into the entry and the doorway to my backyard. No good. I was starting to think I'd never find anything for the wall.

Ikea to the rescue! I have browsed through that catalog about a million times by now. Every time I discover something new. My initial thought was to get the Lack shelves. They were the right length but too deep, so they were out.

So I flipped to the kitchen section. Before I'd only looked through for cabinets but now I was looking for shelving solutions. Ikea did me one better. They make several styles of rails that you attach to the wall and hang accessories from. Initially I liked the Grundtal series because it's stainless steel like my appliances but when I got to the store I liked the Kroken series better. I bought two rails, plus two spice racks, one multi-purpose shelf, three pot holders and a bunch of hooks. All of that cost about $75.

Then I went to the office section and bought two white Järpen shelves. They make them in two depths - 11" and 7.5". Instead of the recommended wall supports I bought four Håll brackets because they matched the Kroken accessories. Also, the brackets can be installed to fit either the 11" deep shelves, or by flipping them the 7.5" deep shelves. Genius! Together, the shelves and the brackets were about $30.

At the risk of sounding dumb, I have no idea if New York City apartment building walls have studs or not. My guess was no because every construction site I've seen (and there are plenty) has a concrete or steel frame for each apartment. So the last part of my do-it-yourself prep was a trip to Home Depot. I grabbed a stud finder to find out the truth, a level, and both concrete wall screws and anchor screws so that no matter what my results I would be prepared.

Back on the UES, I used the stud finder and confirmed that my kitchen wall was concrete. After a couple of hours of work marking, measuring, leveling and installing, here was my end result:

The fruits of my labor.

I am so frickin' proud of myself! I called T and bragged to another friend over the weekend. The two shelves match the white wall. They hold my pans and some dry foods, freeing valuable cabinet space. The little counter space I have has been freed because the paper towel holder and my toaster live on the shelves as well. I even went to Container Store and splurged on some of those stackable kitchen jars.

On the far rail I have two hooks which hold my frying pans and two more hooks hold my pot holders and cooking gloves. There are also two empty planter pots that will soon hold spices. The near rail has my spice rack and the front shelf is temporarily holding extra spices and my Pam.

The best part? The depth of everything was no more than 7.5", so nothing encroaches into my doorways. I can still flow through the galley unimpeded. I ended up with some leftover products to return to Ikea, so in the end this project will have cost me about $100, including setup materials. I also have to paint the concrete screws black. But I'm pleased at how easy and cheap this project was and how wonderful the end result looks.

Designing conundrum

Man, it is hard making 250 sq. feet work. My captain's bed has worked out very well, but admittedly it's been the only stroke of (borrowed) genius I've had. I really want to take advantage of my high ceilings with some shelves. But you're supposed to screw those babies into studs, right? Do NYC apartments even have studs? I'm scared I'll buy the shelves, put them up and then watch as they come crashing down.

I don't really have any floor space left for furniture unless I get rid of my current pieces. I suppose that's an option, but not really one I want to explore too deeply. I like my furniture. I just want some pieces that are taller while I live in my current apartment. Work had stalled me from worrying about my lack of storage. But this week the Home issue of Time Out New York is out and of course I grabbed a copy. It contained a good amount of sound advice.

The designer suggestions for a small living space amused me though. Or maybe they bemused me? Sure, put up shelving in my alcove...what alcove? Use an iPod as your only piece of audio visual equipment? You have to be kidding. Float your furniture? Good luck maneuvering around it. I'm not sure these designers understood the concept of 'small' in New York City. The stackable chairs suggestion and double a desk as your dining room table were good thoughts.

As one of the Ikea converted, I'm currently in love with one of the workspaces they present in the catalog:

This whole area is 50 sq. feet.
Too bad that's still about 1/4 of my apartment's
total size.

Of particular interest is the Expedit bookcase on the left with the drawer and door inserts. Very cool! I like the black and white contrast, the height of the unit and...ohmigod, I completely sound like the yuppy The Narrator despises so. But I have to admit, for city living on a budget Ikea is very hard to beat.

That's not to say there are no other pieces that have caught my eye. I love this light from Design Within Reach (table lamp too) and it would make a great accent piece for behind or next to my TV unit. I'm also loving this lantern by notNeutral -- it would be perfect for my backyard. Furniture-wise, I think the Windham bookcases from Crate & Barrel are gorgeous (the desk isn't too bad either), and Pottery Barn's Graham Desk (a steal at only $1,000 plus delivery!) or Cynthia Wardrobe (cool mirror on the outside) or Chiffonier would look gorgeous.

Pier 1 was my main furniture shopping destination in Connecticut, but I have no idea what happened to their website. They went from having their full catalog online with an e-commerce component to some products online in a website that is so 1998. It went backwards in time from a pretty cool site to a pretty cheesy one. Their in-store selection has also changed for the worse, IMHO.

This weekend I'm planning to hit some of the thrift stores here on the UES. I've heard you can find some sweet pieces around here, and I don't doubt it.

Progress

It's been three weeks and I'm not fully unpacked yet. But I've made excellent progress.

move-in day (Aug. 18)

****

Around Sept. 1

****


Yesterday

****

Yes I have a bed! That I can sleep on! And a TV! With cable just installed! I also maybe have a mouse. Sigh...I'm going out drinking.

Out of gas

I'm so D-U-N done, as in I'm so done unpacking. Unfortunately, I'm only done unpacking in my head because in reality there are still boxes all over the place. And where there's not boxes there is clothing that I'm feeling too lazy to hang up. And where there's not clothing there are folded up boxes waiting to go into storage. And where there's not folded up boxes there is me, looking around hopelessly.

It's not that I have too much crap (or if I do I'm still in denial); it's that I have don't have furniture to put the crap on. And I may not be able to afford said furniture for awhile. For example, I sold my desk and office bookshelf from Connecticut because they were too big for my apartment. To replace them, I really want this awesome Incognito Compact Office from Crate & Barrel but I have to pay off my move first. I also really like the Balcony Wardrobe but I'd have to remove a piece of my current furniture to fit it in. Then there are the three additional Lack shelves I want from IKEA. This shit adds up.

Yesterday when I came home from work I wanted to escape it all - so I finally went outside and enjoyed my backyard for an hour or so. It was so nice to just sit outside, listen to the breeze and relax. I swear, the air is better back there from the tree aspiration. When I came in I felt refreshed enough to actually unpack some more crap. I can't wait to have the place finally set up.

The stars align

What a successful weekend! I got three major items on the to-do list accomplished.

On Friday I ran out to Bed Bath & Beyond (my unofficial second home these days) during lunch and bought a nice bamboo shade for my window. When I got home from work I decided to try installing it before leaving for Connecticut. The directions were vague at best - take out shade, install metal brackets, attach shade. Okay, super. Except I realized I needed my drill to install the brackets so it had to wait until I got back from Connecticut.

On Saturday I sold my SUV to a dealer. I'm only breaking even on the deal (they're paying off the rest of my loan) but I'm not complaining. I'll drop it off next weekend. On the way back to CT house (or weekend house as my NYC friends are calling it) I stopped at the IKEA in New Haven to buy two Lack shelves to put under my bed.

Backstory: since I knew I would be short on storage space at the apartment, my plan was to turn my bed into a captain's bed, which basically means putting drawers or shelves underneath. My original object of desire was Pottery Barn's Stratton bed with drawers until I came to my senses about the cost. Then a couple of months ago I was watching "Mission Organization" on HGTV and watched the designer put closet organizer shelves under a bed to make a de facto captain's bed. Brilliant. Except I wanted to use drawers so I could store clothes down there. I wanted to recreate that and found reasonably priced drawer units at Target. But the shipping was going to kill me. So I moved down to the city without the shelves. I saw very similar units at Bed Bath & Beyond but they were $130 each, more than double the Target shelves. I'd pretty much given up hope until I found this blog post. Amazing!

A coworker and I discussed the logistics at work - would I need to build the platform? Only if the Lack shelves wouldn't support the weight of my boxspring, mattress, me and occasional guest sleepers. IKEA is a store I try to avoid as a rule. Like Stew Leonard's the store is set up so you have to walk down every freakin aisle before you can check out. Sometimes I just want to get in, find out what bin the furniture is in, get it, and get out. Had I been smarter I just would have gone to the self-serve furniture area, done a search and been on my way.

As it was I hard such a hard time remembering Aisle 5, Bin 26 that by the time I made it to the warehouse I had to look it up anyway. Then I had to go get a palette cart. I made it through checkout and didn't even bother with the loading area. I pushed the cart out to my SUV, loaded the shelves up and headed home.

Back at weekend house, I was telling my roommate about how I really wanted furniture similar to what we had on our front porch for my NYC backyard. In a kind gesture he said I could just take the furniture. It belonged to a roommate who had long since moved out and our deck had plenty of extra stuff to move there. Score!

The party on Saturday night was great - lots of Beer Pong, asshole and drinking. Also, lots of people crashing at our house. With my mattress down in the city, I was forced to sleep on the extra boxspring I'd left behind. Uncomfortable at best.

Sunday was nuts - I loaded the porch furniture into my car, and drove down to my city apartment. I was lucky enough to find parking right on my street, not too far from my building. Then I unloaded the furniture, plus my shelves and some other stuff I'd left behind. Then I loaded some crap from my apartment into my SUV, drove back to Connecticut and then finally took the train back into the city.

I was exhausted and all I wanted was a night in my bed. But that meant setting up my bed, which meant setting up my shelves, which meant clearing a space for my bed, which meant finishing hanging my bamboo shade and moving a bunch of boxes. After 15 minutes of high comedy, I managed to hang my shade. It was heavy and I was afraid the brackets would get pulled right out of the wall at first. But everything held and the shade works great.

I moved the boxes to the other side of my living room and started assembling the shelves. The directions were amusing - no words, just pictures. I had both shelving units assembled in a jiffy. There was one screw missing (my bad luck with pre-fabbed furniture continues I guess) but it didn't affect the integrity of the unit. I sat on each to check and they most definitely held my weight. A friend and I set them up on the floor, dropped my boxspring and mattress down on top and - ta-da! - I had my bed back! I was incredibly excited. Plus, the shelves left plenty of room for storage. So while I couldn't store my clothes there without buying baskets, I could store all my books and anything else missing a home.

The shelves also came with brackets to wall-mount them, which gave me a great idea. I want to buy three more and make a full entertainment center. Two shelves on the side and one along the top. It will be awesome, and it will be a nice stopgap until I can afford something nicer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Sunday night I slept in my bed. I can't tell you how great that was. Now if only I had more time to catch up on my sleep. Still no gas, still no trash key. I don't quite feel at home yet.